A few freshmen on this year's team reportedly had Ivy offers, Dartmouth, Penn, Cornell, Princeton.
2 linebackers, 2 wide receivers, a tight end.
Not saying that is the major competitor , the Mountain West is.

And they often compete with Davis in recruiting, more so than the Big Sky schools.

Davis’ academic reputation is rare at the FCS level but less rare among FBS schools.
Davis objectively doesn’t have an academic edge over Cal, UCLA, Stanford, Washington, Georgia Tech, Michigan, Duke, North Carolina etc.

The game notes don’t list Marquis Bell at CB. Josiah Allen is listed at that CB and as the backup at both safeties and nickel. DB has gone from the deepest level of the defense to the thinnest.
We had some other highly rated freshmen beside Colfield but i guess they have been injured. Trey Carr just got back for the last two games.

Fortunately Zaire Collier was there to get Plough back to earth regarding how to finish the game. Plough says the run plays they had for this game predominately were run option plays for Harper. That should be different this week.
I’m assuming Harper is going to be at QB.

Sac hasn’t had a quality win, can they get and hold it together to go on a four game win streak and beat Idaho and UC Davis, two teams better than anyone they’ve beaten? It’s possible. I am thinking their minds will be elsewhere. Idaho is a different team with Wood at QB.

Commitment to the run wasn’t in evidence until after Harper’s 4th quarter interception. With the score 24-16 Davis had a drive from their own 25 to the UNC 23. On that drive they attempted and completed one four yard pass. That drive took 7 minutes and featured 14 running plays, over 1/3 of all the rushes by Davis in the entire game.

More.about Davis Harsin as a recruit.
Link to article

Bye games are not optional. Every team this year had a 12 game schedule in a 13 week window except teams that has week zero games which had 12 games.scheduled in a 14 week window.

freshmen can red shirt with four games or less, playoff games do not count

Hard to believe that with a 17 point lead late in third quarter with the backs Davis has and Harper having physical issues that they didn't run more with the backs, not Harper.
They waited until the fourth quarter and then did precisely that but with an eight point lead. They knew Northern Colorado was vulnerable to the run, giving up over five yards per carry. Plough has to engage in a little.self.critique about his play calling in that game.
Fisher and Vargas ended up each just a few carried away from 100 yards days.

Pinnick was described as sick, not injured; the bye week doesn’t help that.

Plough said Harper had cramps.
In the second half they ran Harper too much, some appeared to be planned runs.

Why do broadcaster think that Jr. is part of a last name? It doesn’t need to be called out on play by play. Same thing with other teams that put Jr on the back of uniforms. We had a couple of juniors in the game one on each team and i think junior was said fifty times,

Davis surprisingly has a good run defense, after seeming poor earlier this year.. Before this game Davis was second in the conference in least yards yielded per carry.

any clue as to what happened to Maquis Bell?

Exactly, therefor run

The worst 2 minutes offense.. i figured that would be Harper’s strength.

Jim Speck 1973 -1976 was a true freshman in era before redshirt freshmen at Davis is in the hall of fame. He is in the hall of fame. As a freshman Speck played in Davis’32-31 Thanksgiving weekend loss to Boise State and passed for over 300 yards in that game. That was an era when Davis was outsized by major D2 scholarship programs like Boise. Boise narrowly lost in the final seconds in the D2 Semifinals. Davis beat Nevada and Santa Clara that year ending 7-3 record.

He also said that the opportunity to earn a degree rather than a certificate was a factor. With the new NCAA rules I suspect some schools are offering grad students just a semester scholarship. Some schools have no program offering a masters degree in a year.